#we've both had a weird relationship with writing and Tumblr the past year or so tbqh

[kindahoping4forever]

Totally late to the party on this one, but I'm obsessed with the Daddy's Home series! Do you believe it'll ever be continued? ❤️

Oh wow, thank you for reading! I haven't gotten a message about that series in a very long time, what a pleasant surprise!

That series was a collaboration with (and primarily the brainchild of) my writing partner at the time, @cal-puddies - we did actually have a second "season" outlined that got shelved for various reasons. If one day she were to decide that's something she'd like to circle back to, I'd absolutely be on board!

[flockrest]

mun(day) questions / @sentinaels, @vigilantdesert, & @stygicniron

thank you lots for these! ♡ very fun to think about and answer! all under the cut because it's a doozy. i am not a concise person, what can i say :'D

when did you first start writing?

in the roleplaying context, ten years ago ( half of which i took a hiatus for aslfkjsdl )! core memory, no joke, i can still very keenly remember weird details of the day it all started. as a hobby, this started way back before i even hit secondary school! i was not an objectively good writer, but no tween really is. i had lots of fun and all the cringefail phases i've gone through since have helped me get to where i am now in my writing development — i can at least say i'm happy with where i'm at with that! and i'm still having fun! ♡

in what language did you start writing?

online? english....my beloathed. very ironic, i know aslkfjdsl

if your mother tongue is not the language you write now, what caused you to switch languages?

quite honestly for the engagement! then simply because i feel i got better at writing in english than i could in vietnamese — my education for both differed, especially in my adolescent years, and i've practiced literacy in this context more for english than i have for viet.

i am still very insecure about my grasp of english in online spaces though ( my writing process involves a lot of me searching up even the simplest words to ensure their meaning and that they will convey what i want you to feel, i still forget words or mix phrases up — sorry to my dm buddies when this happens btw — and my editing is so time-consuming because i have to often cut things or rephrase them to avoid being redundant ), which is why i have that it's my second language disclaimer alfjslfk

what was the first muse that you’ve written?

my first ever muse was my lovely queen zelda from twilight princess! she saw me through a lot of my roleplaying firsts, honestly. she still holds such a special place in my heart because of all the experiences writing her allowed me to make, as well as all the wonderful people i befriended through her that i still haven't forgotten about to this day!

( i always find myself missing one in particular when the mood hits, because we were years-long mains during what felt like the peak of the zelda rpc prime and she was as close to an exclusive affiliate i'd ever get. i hope you've been doing super well out there, my liege!! if we ever somehow get to writing again, y'all will just not be ready for my unhinged status over her link, and my zelda, and the midzelink we've crafted entire worlds over, and that is a promise aflkjdsj )

do you still write your first muse?

unfortunately, no! i have dipped in and out with her before, but i don't know if i'll ever return to her now when i've got so many others wrangling for my time and energy...i think i would like to if i got the opportunity to regularly write with twilight princess muses again :) zelda was a more character-contained muse, in that i studied less of the world-lore around her and more of her, her dynamics, and her relationships, so activity would be very slow and pretty contingent on level of interest from others aslkfdjf

what caused you to start writing? what was your key point?

okay. don't laugh at me please. i'm pretty sure this is a connecting point for a few of us. but for fanfic purposes, of course asflkjds i started reading fics before i started writing any, and only began doing so because there was such a dearth of the stories that catered specifically to my niche whims and wants that past ray was like "FINE. i'll do it myself"

now, fr, you gotta promise to not laugh at me. the want for a more interactive experience didn't really hit until i discovered tumblr ask blogs, wherein i wanted to have a try at running one myself! then that evolved into more writing than art...then i just leaned into roleplaying wholeheartedly asflkjdf everybody say thank you to artists for inspiring artists!

have you ever written a canon muse that you first thought of ‘meh’ when they appeared in their canon show/movie/book?

not that i can think of, no! i don't tend to pick up muses i don't feel super invested in. if it's meh in the more oh this character SUCKS sense, then i guess. rauru? like i love that funky fellow, or at least huge parts of him that i'll steal from nintendo because man what the fuck were they doing with him, but he seems to be my most polarising muse in terms of audience reception aflksjdla this isn't a dig at anyone for that btw!!

how far do you go with divergencies when it comes to your canon muse?

as far as it'll take for me to be satisfied with them! this ofc differs with every muse, but i try to keep general characterisations unchanged — or at least the parts of them that stand out to me and feel crucial to who my muses are.

e.g. i ignored the entirety of the hidden world when it came to writing toothless from httyd, because its depiction of his behaviour ( and hence, implicated thoughts ) was so extremely Bad Tier, i was flabbergasted that it came from the same writer as httyd2. there was, imo, such a huge gap between the toothless of httyd2 and the toothless of the hidden world in terms of characterisation and character development ( ESPECIALLY with what it did to his bond with hiccup. i'm still infuriated about that ) that i had an entire rewrite where things might've ended the same way, but it would've taken a different road for berk to get there in the works.

that's when canon has disappointed me to the extreme, though aflkdslj i have misgivings about totk, yes, but i doubt you'll be seeing unprompted >2.5k words essays from me regarding my birdies or even rauru ( if only because nintendo didn't give us enough about him to make me feel like they fucked up beyond words ) anytime soon.

with rauru, anyway, it's more of a..."i am construing him differently; you couldn't make him palatable despite clearly wanting to do so, so i'm making him 'palatable' ( in the HE AND HIS FAULTS ARE SO INTERESTING I WANT TO EXPLORE THEM IN A WAY THAT DOESN'T HAVE ME GAGGING sense ); also i think you make him way too important without actually committing to the bit, so i'm gonna give him so many complexes about it" case.

[clusterduck28]

Unhinged TMNT 2012 rant incoming, 'mbrace yourselves.

The writers had such severe shipper brain rot like oh my GOD. I almost got used to Donatello x April in every episode but the introduction of Karai and the fact the she and Leonardo began straight up flirting in the very same episode she was introduced in was the last straw for me. I'm not watching this series past ep15, it's just unbearable to see the romance and ships be prioritized over character, plot and world development in this series. I just hate that the only 2 female characters introduced this far into the show HAD to be immediately paired up with one of the turtles who are, apparently, written like fucking hormonal teenagers who can't hold it in their *ahem*... shells and basically fall for the first girl they see after getting out of the sewer for the firs time. I'm not principally opposed to romance in media in general and those ships in particular but the way those 2 relationships have been written bothers me so much because it feels like the only reason Karai and April (to a lesser extent) exist in the story so far is to basically be romantic foil for Leo and Don as without that they have not been established as compelling characters on their own. Can they be developed to be more interesting later? Sure but the fact that their development is fronted with romance plot lines doesn't give me any hope at all.

Also, the crumbs of Karai's characterization that we've been given so far are so underwhelming like why did she even start interacting with Leonardo in the first place? As far as I can tell it boils down to her just being bored, like she's going through her rebellious teenager phase and does weird things that go against Shredders wishes just to entertain herself I GUESS. That's fine on it's own but compared to '03 Karai's internal conflict between blind obedience to Shredder and her own senses of honor, justice and empathy that lead to her getting into all sorts of morally ambiguous shenanigans throughout the series? That's WAAAY the fuck more compelling than whatever '12 Karai has going so far. It doesn't seem like there was that much thought put into her aside from someone on the writing team wanting to give Leo a goth gf or whatever.

Oh another thing. I did a little digging and apparently both Raph and Mikey ALSO get girlfriends later on in the series and I'm willing to bet that watching those romances develop would've been as cringy to me as the previous 2

I really wasn't expecting this all to be this bad, folks, like nobody warned me that the show was seemingly written by people who used to write slash fan fiction and never developed their writing skills and style past the tropes common in that particular literary form.

Have I been spoiled by good writing in modern shows? After all, I'm criticizing a show that came out 10 years ago, maybe it was just like that with most 'kids shows' back in the '10s and there's actually nothing unusual about female characters having to be romantically tangled up with one of the dudes if they want to stand a chance of being a significant part of the main cast going forward? MAYBE? I certainly never noticed that being done to such a ridiculous extent in other shows from that time period, or perhaps I wasn't really paying attention to that OR, I might've just gotten lucky to never have came across that particular trope.

Still, it is kind of weird that nobody covering this series really points that out? I remember watching multiple grown-ass cartoon youtubers discuss this show, in passing or otherwise, generally praising the aspects of the show while just not mentioning this seemingly glaring problem that is, as far as I know, only this prevalent in this iteration of the turtles and nowhere else. As far as the tumblr TMNT fandom goes I've only seen people mention April x Donnie being a thing that was prevalent throughout the series and I made peace with that fact going in but the fucking Karai thing caught me off-guard, punched me in the gut, knocked me off my feet and kicked me in the ribs 25 times while I was down.

if there are any genuine '12 fans who read this far, I'd just like to say first of all, thank you :), second, this is not an attack against you personally or collectively, you keep on liking what you like regardless of what some goon on tumblr (who didn't even watch the whole thing) had to say. This is mostly a vent post for me designed to dump all of me thoughts out there so I can be done thinking about this show for now and be able to move on to something else.

[ellieguevara]

Back on Tumblr (2009-Present)

It's weird being back here, but in a way, Tumblr has always been my safe space. I can write freely here. I met friends here. I was able to express myself without having people I know personally/intimately watching my every move.

I started Tumblr back in 2009 and had a few usernames along the way:

2009 pikachu1lizabeth, which was my username from a KDrama site where I met Toki, a guy who told me I should join Tumblr to blog my feelings. We still follow each other on IG and Facebook. Wild.

2010-2012 I eventually changed my username when I got to college, to Thoughts-and-a-typewriter. It was at this time where I leaned heavily on Tumblr to write out my teenage/college aged feelings, flourished in my queer sexuality and was able to feel more myself.

2012-2018

In 2012, I decided to get a bit more personal, and changed my username to cafe-con-lizz, where I kept my focus on writing, writing poetry, queer things, music, etc. However, I was confident enough to attach my name to my user, and put a face to the writer behind the screen.

In 2018, I deleted tumblr and almost 10 years worth of memories. Memories of exes (friends, relationships) and all that came with it.

It is now 2022 and I'm back as me. As Elizabeth Guevara. As Ellie -- or how I'm rebranding, as Ely. I'm back to use Tumblr as my ongoing journal. I'm now 30 years old, and at the beginning of the year, the woman I loved so deeply for 5 years told me she met someone else. I know -- sounds horrible, and yes it was, but that call was the straw that broke the camel's back. It was where we both decided and saw that our relationship had ended due to many issues that piled up over the years.

Nathalie was my first long term girlfriend. Just like Jeremy was my first long term boyfriend. While I'd dated in the past, when you get to relationships that span YEARS, the others feel irrelevant in a way.

Nat and I started dating in September of 2016. We became engaged in 2020 during COVID and as of February, we've been broken up. This hasn't been an easy journey for me, in trying to find myself again and let go of what once was. It's been 6 months and i'm still stumbling about. In January I made the decision to go to therapy and while it's been helpful, i still see there's so much work for me to do.

Anyway, I plan to use this as an ongoing journal to document the rest of my healing.

[jameswrites]

The idea that wanting to explore options of what to do with work you've invested time into that might not fit your current needs is... Weird? Doesn't feel very fan friendly at first blush I'd say.

Additionally, fan iterations take literally nothing and the only reason we have this conversation is because of copyright imho. Sherlock Holmes copyright expired decades ago, and we've got how many derivatives of it?

Humans tell stories similar to what we've heard and there are only so many stories out there. Do I get why copyright exists? Absolutely.

Does my sibling? Absolutely. But they wanted a world where people who put the time and effort and had the following could engage and also make a living so they created an open creative commons license and applied it to their universe so everyone could enjoy it. And make money. Because my sibling got their start by creating fan art and they still do.

Fan art and fan fiction (I'd even argue the things that make money on the dl, but I digress) are derivatives and absolutely bring new people into the fandom that would not otherwise be interested. It's literally how I've gotten involved in every fandom after the age of about 12. Every single one. I'm almost 27.

They're also a massive time investment sometimes. I've written over 600k words on Ao3 alone and more on defunct websites. I feel loss when I recall the many stories (100s of thousands of words lost) because of various moves, not knowing how to back up saves, websites being taken down abruptly, and attacks by those who want censorship and win. If that ever happens to ao3 I have backups of my stories, but only after years of experience showing me I should...

That being said, even with thousands to tens of thousands of hours of work put into fanfic by me, here are several reasons I've considered orphaning work:

My violent yet seemingly mild mannered fiance wanted me to and I told him I did but I just stopped writing on ao3 and did it on Tumblr.

My friend told me I was terrible at writing and was constantly giving "concrit" that wasn't actually helpful it was just "why write this when you could write [thing they wanted]?"

Tw anti and child molester talk- An anti who was 30 years old in a fandom we were both in that was primarily teenagers (I was 19) said that I "wrote like a child molester" because a relationship between two grown men well into their 30s had one character as "childlike". I was living with my child molester father. This did not go over well. She had a good number of followers and she managed to help me get doxxed. Really about helping the children (she considered anyone "childlike" a child apparently) when you get a 19 year old doxxed. In an abusive home anyway.

I felt I'd grown past needing certain stories as coping mechanisms and I was mostly right but I've kept them.

I was worried my co-workers might find out I write *gasp* fanfiction. People know. No one cares. I got a writing tutor job and have some fanfic I showed them that they were like hey cool this is great!

My mom found some fanfic in a show we both liked and showed it to me, and two times it was my own stuff. Oops.

And more.

I've never orphaned my works in the end but I've deleted and then resubmitted things before and I don't think I'd do that again.

It's not hypocritical to want to know the full options in a situation and I hope that the writer of this ask understands they're asking a good question and I hope that they find the right answer for themselves.

I'm thinking of orphaning a fic, but I'm pretty protective over my ideas. What are some pros and cons to orphaning?

Pros:

your username is removed completely and no one will know you wrote it (unless they remember that you did)

the story stays up for those readers who loved it, but you don’t ever have to think about it again if you don’t want to

if someone is checking up on your AO3 profile for some reason (eg. overbearing parents), they will not know you ever wrote the fic

the fic is now available for anyone out there who wants to continue it, remix it, translate it, or podfic it

Cons:

you lose all control over the story and can never get that control back

that means you can’t edit it or delete it or remove it from the Archive. It is permanently available and you can’t change that fact

no one will know that you wrote it, so if you want to take credit again later you will have a tough time doing so

the fic is now available for anyone out there who wants to continue it, remix it, translate it, or podfic it (since you’re protective, this might belong here instead of above)

That’s what I’ve got off the top of my head. Anyone else?